You're adorable.

That the term is too long overall is not a separate argument.

If you're concerned that older writers are unfairly disadvantaged because younger writers could sell the authority to use their creations for decades, then the solution seems obvious: Reduce the younger writers' ability to sell the authority to use their creations.

I am going to die at some point. I have no intention of leaving an heir. When I die, the idea that authority over the things I have created would somehow be held by some private individual instead of being available for the common good is not only not desirable to me, but I see it as really detrimental, and despicable that someone might hope to gain from my work by denying it to others.

A movie studio can make a billion dollars off of a movie in five years. Your objection would seem to point to copyright terms being too long in general rather than them being too short.

I don't believe heirs should get any reward for your invention.

Corporations already routinely use things created by individuals and smaller companies regardless of copyright or patent. As long as their legal team has tens of billions of dollars behind it they can outspend you 100:1, they're pretty comfortable with the fact that they can litigate you until your bankrupt and then buy your patents or copyrights or just buy your whole company. Patents and copyrights do not really protect small inventors.

And copyright protections and patents are better deterrents to that than laws against murder?

Can someone explain why it's reasonable to have patents and copyrights continue to exist after the original author is dead?

I really never understood that.

You can't do that. You signed away your right to class action lawsuit on the registration form for the site. You have to go through arbitration, which the business wins 97% of the time.

They do?

Do what Lance Armstrong did with his chest full of "Lance Armstrong memorabilia": Go out and win the Tour de France.

I remember using Lala, mostly at work. At the time it was much nicer to use than iTunes and Pandora.

I remember the day when I found out that Apple was shutting down Lala, and I was very disappointed, because Apple is very insistent that people only use technology in the way that Apple wants them to. I do generally like Apple's interface design, but Apple is very insistent that its way is the best, and they have been insistent even in the cases that they've been wrong.

Lala had then what Amazon, Google, and Apple have only recently added, which is the ability to basically mirror your library from their website, and when Apple bought the service it was a big loss. I think Google or Amazon would have actually built on the service, but Apple just killed it, and that sucked.

I hope you're not intending to imply that the legal system in the United States is proper.

If it's 15, starting your car and leaving it in park just to have the heater on so you can stay warm is not drunk driving.

Legally it may be *considered* drunk driving, but it's not.

No, this is how Nokia intends to make money in the future: by selling stolen credit card information.

What's bizarre to me is that we learn that the human body is 98.6 and that water boils at 100. When I was young I thought that human body temperature was close to boiling. I really doubt that I'm the only person in the U.S. who didn't know.

Most people in the U.S. probably couldn't tell you that human body temperature is ~37 Celsius or that water boils at 212 Fahrenheit.

100 kilos = 220 pounds. Once you know that, it's not that difficult.